Hide in Plain Sight
by Talliya
Summary: Duo finds out the hard way that what you don't know, can kill you. Triton spends years trying to set him straight.


_**I do not own any rights to Gundam Wing or it's characters, this work is not made for profit.**_

Duo fell in love with Trowa during the war. He wasn't sure what about the tall, quiet pilot had captured his interest, or managed to keep it through the guy blowing up his buddy Deathscythe, and punching him who knows how many times when he was captured. But through it all Duo had always held a wealth of admiration for the other boy. Trowa always seemed to be playing two sides of the game at the same time, it was a large part of what made him such a great undercover agent. He had Colonel Une convinced that he was one of her best soldiers...because he was, but he was also a Gundam Pilot and if she ever knew that before the war was over she never told them. He always had an angle, and no one else ever knew what it really was. Duo respected that, his life on the streets had taught him the hard way to watch out for people like that, that they were generally bad news. But Trowa wasn't, sure if you were on the wrong side from him you got hurt, but he wasn't in himself, a bad person. Duo always wondered how he managed that.

He wasn't sure when his feelings of admiration had turned to something more, he only knew that they had. They had fought off Dekim Barton, who wanted nothing more than to destroy Trowa, for stealing his son's name. They'd saved his own granddaughter from his single-minded influence, and saved the Earth-sphere from annihilation once again. They were heroes. They're Gundams had finally been seriously retired. They were given the option to choose a new life for themselves.

It was a heady decision. They could finish out high school as regular teenagers, go directly to college if they wanted, join the Preventers, go off and do anything else they really wanted. Quatre had gone back to his family's business alongside some of his sisters; Wufei had joined the Preventers, so had Trowa; Heero had also joined the Preventers, at least until Relena had graduated from high school. Then he became the head of her security detail. Duo had decided to finish out high school, he was only 16 after all.

Though as he'd gone through the motions of the everyday teenage life he'd felt the lack. Not just of the excitement from piloting a Gundam, but of his friends, the other pilots. Mostly he craved Trowa's attention. But the boy was always busy guarding important political people, or stalling the long laid plans of smugglers, drug runners and slave traders. They barely had time to speak to each other every couple of months. Yet, even with that small amount of contact Duo's feelings had grown. Even after Trowa couldn't find the time to talk to him anymore after that first year, the feelings held. But Duo had felt he would have time to tell the other how he felt. Then the last semester of his senior year in high school as he was closing his locker and heading to his second class of the day, the intercom tore his world apart. It gave credence to the old saying: What you don't know can kill you.

After the war Trowa Barton died a tragic death while working for the Preventers. Not wanting to carry around the life and name of someone who had been fully willing to kill off the earth for the so called betterment of the colonies Trowa killed himself off and changed the way he looked with the help of his sister Catherine. The two had found out during the trouble started by Dekim Barton that they were in fact related, Trowa being her missing little brother Triton Bloom. So when all was said and done he cut off his hair, dyed it blonde and began going by his actual name. He cooked up the "Death of Trowa Barton" with Une's help and they pulled it off his second year with the Preventers. He didn't want to kill people anymore, or deal with people who did everyday. So he died, and began life as himself. He travelled with the circus for a while with his sister, then went off to college. He'd been sad that Duo didn't take the time to come to the get together Relena held for him, where he explained to all of those closest to him what was going on. But there wasn't really anything he could do about it, they hadn't spoken in about a year -that was another reason Triton wanted out of the Preventers - he didn't know how to get into contact with Duo anymore...not legally anyway.

So Duo never knew that the man he loved, was in fact still alive. That the world held a funeral for a name only. Heartbroken he went off to college and stuffed his nose in his books and rarely came up to see the world around him. However, some stalwart folks took it upon themselves to drag him out of himself and by the time he had his Bachelor's Degree he was more like his old self. He'd even dated a few people, but always broke it off because his heart just wasn't in it.


End file.
